There have been developed several downhole rod guides for sustaining the centralized disposition of a pumping rod within a string of production tubing. It is well known that such conventional rod guides suffer from excessive wear and abrasion under the influence of upwardly streaming high-pressure hydrocarbons. Such hydrocarbon streams typically include abrasive solid materials such as sand and debris which drastically undermine rod guide life cycle particularly because these occluded materials are moving at high speed. In addition, these solids and other troublesome materials appreciated tend to inhibit the upwards hydrocarbon flow.
These and other known deficiencies in the rod guide art have continued to render sustaining continuous flow of hydrocarbons from subsurface formations via downhole pumping systems upwardly to the well surface elusive to remedy, and unduly expensive in view of the necessity to frequently conduct rod guide maintenance because of inherently short life cycles and substantial consumption of energy to sustain demanding pumping requirements. Accordingly, these limitations and disadvantages of the prior art are overcome with the present invention, wherein improved means and techniques are provided which are especially useful for pumping hydrocarbons to the well surface with minimal prerequisite maintenance and without consuming substantial extra energy.